I went to the house today and they have enough plywood on the trusses that the inside of the house is actually shady.  There are still enough big holes that are not yet covered and enough holes in the OSB sheathing that I would still prefer to sleep in a tent over sleeping in the house.  But it is actually starting to look like a real house now.  Okay, maybe not a house yet, but at least a barn.

On Friday, Tina and I went to the house to meet with the Electrician to discuss how we actually want the house wired.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the way the house is actually wired does not need to match the blueprints as long as the wiring meets code.  It also appears we got real lucky building now rather than next year.  The Electrician mentioned that the code for our area follows a standard written in 2011 that requires circuit breakers costing about $5 each.  The 2014  version of the code, required by the area where our rental house is, requires circuit breakers costing $105 each!

The Electrician took careful notes of our meeting (all over the floor).  He told us the $ symbol means “switch”, but I am not that dumb.  He is a small businessman too.  So I am sure it means bleed this idiot’s bank account dry.

The Electrician also convinced me to add some LED lights under the top cabinets.  That is something that Tina wanted originally but I had convinced her to forego them due to the additional false bottom required in the cabinets.  (I was thinking of the under cabinet lights from 15 years ago when I made the cabinets for our Minnesota house.)  The new lights look pretty neat and I do not think it will change the design of my cabinets much, if any.

The plan for the coming week is to have the framing totally complete by mid week.  Then the Electrician and the HVAC guys will start their thing.  The following week will be the plumbers.

Last Saturday I went to the build site by myself because Tina was sick with a bad cold.  As I drove towards it, I was surprised that I could see it from almost 1/2 mile away!  It is actually a 3 dimensional project now!

The power company even had power running to it!  However, they put the electrical box on exactly the opposite side of the house that we paid them for.  That was due to the fact that they did not get their work done before the concrete work was done.  We have not yet determined if they are going to give me some money back since the trench we paid them to dig was considerably longer than what they actually ended up digging.  Because the well is on the opposite side of the house, I am going to have to pay Brad quite a bit more to dig the trench to it.

I think the porch across the whole back of the house is really going to be something special.  It will obviously have a roof over it and will include 2 ceiling fans.

They also delivered the roof trusses.

They had also completed quite a bit of the interior framing.  However, most of the pictures I took of the inside are very difficult to discern the individual rooms.  However, the photo from the front door, down the main hallway into the living room is pretty cool.

Finally, Brad ran into a problem when one of his tractors developed a bad oil leak.  Unfortunately, it is the tractor that he needs to dig the second trench for the leach field for the septic system.

The pace of the build really started to pick up in week 3.  They got the slab poured for the house.  Then they dug the footings for the back porch and poured the porch and the garage floor.  The concrete work came out really nice.  We are very happy with it.

We also got the first delivery of framing materials.  The headers Brad chose to use are manufactured headers.  They look like 5 2×6’s laminated together and planed smooth.  I think they will be much stronger and more rigid than the headers in our old house which were just 2 2×10’s nailed together.

Finally, they started digging the septic system.

The septic tank looks awful large, but I figure that is because we are so close to the Mexican border.  They know we will be eating a lot of Mexican food and everybody knows how that goes right through you!

In week 2 they were able to get the concrete blocks set on the footings and get all of the underground plumbing done.  They also added several inches of compacted gravel fill inside the foundation to give the concrete slab a nice solid bed.

The house started to look a little bigger, but we still wondered where we were going to fit all of our stuff.

Tina also asked our builder, Brad, to not haul away the dirt they scraped up when leveling the ground for the foundation.  We will be able to use that as fill in the raised gardens we plan to eventually build.  Although it has quite a number weeds in it, I expect we should be able to kill those by spending some quality time with the flamethrower we bought shortly after moving here.

The electric company also finally brought out the power poles necessary to get electricity.  Although the power company wasted no time cashing our check for bringing power in, they did not seem to be in much of a hurry to actually bring the power in.

And of course, since it was a week before Valentine’s Day, Tina felt the need to decorate the tractors and outhouses at the site.

Construction on our new house began the week of January 23, 2017.

Our builder, Brad Cooper (http://www.mc2homes.com/), has been extremely helpful in leading us through the house building process and is doing an excellent job so far.  We are doubly appreciative of his efforts on our behalf since he is not going to be completing the build.  He is going to be taking the build through the sheetrocking and taping and we will be doing all of the finish carpentry, cabinetry and flooring ourselves.

I am certain that I am the worst type of client for Brad to have since I know just enough about construction to be able to formulate really stupid questions and harass him by constantly reminding him of the obvious.

By the end of the first week, they had leveled the ground, dug the holes for the footings and poured the concrete footings.

The concrete they used for the footings must have been some specialized kind of concrete made specifically for footings.  I picked up a piece of the concrete slag and was surprised at how light it was compared to similar sized piece of sidewalk concrete.

Tina and I have been visiting the build site, which is about a 45 minute drive from our rental house, every Saturday.  The photos above are from the first Saturday we went there.  We were both extremely surprised how small the house looked with just the footings poured.  It really did not look much bigger than a small garden shed and we were both left wondering where we were going to put all of our stuff.